


Paperwork

by liriodendron



Series: Conductivity (adjacent) [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Christmas Fluff, Established Relationship, Established Sherlock Holmes/John Watson, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Parenthood, Romance, Synesthesia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-23
Updated: 2017-12-23
Packaged: 2019-02-19 04:42:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,834
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13116252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/liriodendron/pseuds/liriodendron
Summary: Just a bit of Christmas fluff. In which Sherlock Holmes remembers a request, John Watson almost wishes he hadn't, and boring documents turn out to be anything but.This takes place in my Conductivity universe after the events in The Heat Death of the Universe, but isn't part of the main story line.





	Paperwork

**Author's Note:**

> Just kidding! I might have been done with Sherlock and John but the boys aren't done with me. Here's a short little story for the holidays I just couldn't get out of my head. As this isn't part of the series directly, I didn't maintain the same style exactly, but it does fall just after the last Conductivity story, continuity-wise. Thanks to OhDearieMe for edits and Merry Christmas!

“John, come down here for a moment, would you?” Sherlock calls up the stairs, perhaps a bit louder than necessary.

 

It’s been a cold, rainy day in the middle of a London December that has been even more than usually full of cold, rainy days. It doesn’t seem possible that water could still be coming out of the sky in a liquid state at these temperatures, and for all its charms 221B doesn’t exactly do much for keeping the damp out. Nevertheless, Sherlock is in the sort of cheerful mood he normally only associates with the word “homicide”. John, however, is not.

 

“Can it wait? I’m just about to _try_ to put Rosie down.” John sounds aggravated and tired. The baby hasn’t been sleeping well, so neither have they. Sherlock can function on much less sleep than John - or most other people - and is largely unaffected. But John is feeling it and it’s starting to show.

 

At least this should cheer him up.

 

“Not… really. Only take a minute, just a little paperwork.” Sherlock is extremely chuffed with himself for actually remembering something John had said he’d wanted. And right before Christmas, too. Sherlock doesn’t care about Christmas - except for the presents and lights and the chance of some creatively festive sex - but John loves it. He wonders if he’ll be able to count this as John’s Christmas present.

 

John appears on the stairs with Rosie on his hip, both looking disheveled and more than a little stroppy. “What paperwork can’t possibly wait twenty minutes? Or, you know, four hours, the way she’s been going. And who is that?” He motions to the polite-looking older woman standing next to Sherlock. “You haven’t even dealt with the client we have! And he’s been waiting since breakfast.”

 

On the sofa, a gangly man with longish, dirty blond hair tied back waves hesitantly, as though unsure whether he actually does want Sherlock reminded of his presence.

 

“Not a client. Registrar. I didn’t want to be discourteous by keeping her waiting.”

 

“That’s a first,” John mumbles, narrowing his eyes at Sherlock. Nevertheless he forces a smile and a friendly nod at the fussy woman. “What kind of paperwork is this that requires a registrar, anyway?”

 

“Well, John - here, give Rosie to Mrs. Hudson, that’s it.” Their landlady materialises from the kitchen, where she’s been trying to sand some of the acid pitting out of the floorboard and takes Rosie in her arms.

 

Sherlock rubs his hands together, half anticipation, half cold. “Now. Do you remember that case a few months back, with the tropical birds and the classical musician?”

 

John shudders. “Unfortunately.” He absently takes the sheaf of papers from the registrar and leans over the table to look at them as Sherlock talks.

 

“Well, if you recall, in the middle of it you mentioned that we’d better look into making sure we had the right legal documents done in case something happened to you - or both of us - so that Rosie was taken care of. You said you’d never had a will and that mine was probably no longer valid since I’d already died once, and you were worried about what might happen. And then the bird-man hit you on the head with the bassoon and we never finished the conversation?”

 

John rubs his temple at the memory. “Only hazily, but I take your point. Thank you for remembering, I can’t seem to keep a thought in my head for half a minute these days.”

 

He looks up from the papers at Sherlock, pleasantly surprised, and he smiles in the way that gives him fairy-light crinkles around his eyes and Sherlock actual gooseflesh at the approval. “That was… good.” He reaches out to touch Sherlock’s arm, but halts suddenly and examines Sherlock with a mix of confusion and suspicion.

 

“Wait. You don’t need a registrar to formalize a will, and I know you know that. Just a notary.” John shuffles through the documents in his hand, squinting to make out the tiny print without his recently-adopted reading glasses.

 

Only just now does Sherlock feel the slight but familiar pit of uneasiness portending that he may have read this situation very, very wrongly.

 

John freezes, then looks up at Sherlock. “Sherlock, I realize I may be hallucinating from sleep deprivation but these look almost like civil partnership papers.”

 

The pit grows to an abyss. “Ah… well, yes. Yes, they are. You see I did some very thorough research after you mentioned your concerns for Rosie’s future, and while there are a number of steps that can be taken to assure that, estate planning documents, guardianship agreements, tax shelters, et cetera, I came to the conclusion that this was the simplest and most legally sound way to put everything in order, with a minimum loss of assets…” Sherlock’s panicked babbling falters under stony silence from John. He can’t quite decipher the expression on his friend’s face but it certainly isn’t one of the good ones.

 

When John speaks he’s more incredulous than angry. “You drew up civil partnership papers? Just like that. Isn’t there a waiting period?”

 

“Mycroft’s lawyers are very efficient at cutting through red tape. I… may have forged your signature on some filings.” Next to him the registrar opens her mouth to object and Sherlock snaps, “You didn’t hear that. Remember who my brother works for.”

 

He turns back to John, caught off guard by this reaction but now realising he’s somehow gotten hold of the wrong end of the stick.

 

“It was just so you wouldn’t have to be bothered. Just make sure you sign those before you sign the adoption papers, or we’ll have to start all over--”

 

All remaining traces of disbelief evaporate, instantly, and are replaced by outrage. “Adoption papers?” John roars, furious. “ _Bothered_ ? Have you gone _completely_ mental?”

 

Sherlock blinks his bewilderment. “I did what you said you wanted. We fill out the paperwork, problem solved, you and Rosie don’t have to worry about it any more.”

 

John pinches bridge of his nose and walks to the other side of the room, putting as much space between them as he can get away with. “How can you possibly think _this_ ,” he shakes the papers in Sherlocks direction, “is just paperwork? Are you really so--” He bites his tongue with a sound of angry frustration and Sherlock can see him working to control himself.

 

Sherlock looks at him helplessly, struggling to understand. Isn’t this exactly what John had asked for? He’d been so sure John would be both thrilled and relieved, and had even let himself daydream about in what way John might decide to express his appreciation. But when John speaks again, it is in the clipped, stormcloud tone he uses when he is trying very hard to not to hit someone.

 

“I cannot believe that even you, as clueless to basic propriety and human emotions as you are, would expect me to agree to marry you with no discussion, no prior warning, in our freezing cold flat, with Mrs. Hudson and a client who wants you to prove that he couldn’t have killed his mother-in-law because he was across town shagging his wife’s brother as witnesses!”

 

“Uh, step-brother, actually,” interjects the prospective client in a thick Australian accent. He shrinks back as John and Sherlock slowly turn identical, venomous expressions on him. “That seemed important but…now… it doesn’t...it’s fine…”

 

They both resume ignoring him.

 

“Crissakes, you aren’t even wearing trousers!” John stomps back to Sherlock’s side of the sitting room and shakes the sleeve of his second best dressing gown for emphasis.

 

Sherlock protests. “I didn’t say anything about marriage! It’s a partnership with certain state and legal benefits that would be advantageous to--”

 

“It’s like as, and you can keep it!” John cuts him off. Sherlock steps back, feeling his chest tighten unexpectedly at John’s rebuke.

 

“And as if the light fraud and bonkers version of a proposal weren’t enough,” John continues, “you just casually throw out there that you’ll be adopting my daughter as part of the deal. Any other momentous, life changing decisions you’d like to make without my knowledge or consent while you’re at it? Are we moving to Fiji? Will you be transplanting one of my kidneys later while I’m asleep?”

 

“John, I--”

 

“No. I don’t how you got it in your head that this was a even a vaguely acceptable thing to do to a man, but you can get it back out in your own time.” He snatches Rosie, who looks on the verge of an operatic wail, from Mrs. Hudson, and stomps up the stairs. Sherlock stares after him until he disappears, reeling. The registrar flees discreetly.

 

“Oh, Sherlock, you _didn’t_.” Mrs. Hudson clucks, shaking her head. Sherlock throws himself violently into his chair and shrugs off her sympathetic pat on the shoulder. She makes a sound like she’s about to say something else, but thinks better of it and excuses herself downstairs.

 

Sherlock can hear Rosie crying through the ceiling, and he hopes it’s mainly due to being tired and a toddler and not to the scene she’d just witnessed. It wasn’t as if he and John didn’t have loud rows at least once a week, often in front of her. She usually seems more entertained by them than frightened. But this was different somehow, and Sherlock feels guilty. And something else, too.

 

He closes his eyes and steeples his fingers, determined to think his way out of it, but he can’t seem to get past the look on his friend’s face when Sherlock had told him about the adoption papers. He’d been so horrified at the thought. Repulsed. Maybe Sherlock had misinterpreted what John had meant about taking care of Rosie. Maybe he had misinterpreted more than that. John had _said_ he wanted them to be a family, hadn’t he?

 

Sherlock is suddenly made aware of the client still sitting on the sofa when the man shifts and coughs uncomfortably.

 

“That’s rough, mate. Didja really not ask him in advance?”

 

Sherlock’s head whips around and fixes him with a savage glare for daring to speak.

 

The man swallows audibly. “Just sayin’. That’s kind of a bloody lot to spring on a bloke.”

 

“What would you know about it, anyway?” Sherlock snaps.

 

“Well, I am married, right?”

 

“Did you put rogering your brother-in-law over the holidays in your wedding vows? Because you’re doing _brilliant_ at that part.”

 

“Hey, just because I have the occasional bangaroo with a cobber doesn’t mean I don’t love my wife, right? People are complicated. Or haven’t ya taken the notice on that?”

 

“Get out.”

 

“You’re not taking my case?! Why did you have me wait around all day then?” The man gets up indignantly, grabbing for his coat. “Don’t tell me it was just so you’d have a second witness for your ambush engagement!”

 

“Alright, I won’t.” Sherlock stands and hustles him to the door. “I took your case. The wife you love so much killed her mother and tried to blame it on you. Now you’re free to go stuff your drongo, or whatever unholy idiom you ridiculous people use, to your heart’s content.” He slams the door in the face of the useless Aussie and throws himself back into his chair, hard enough to make the metal whine in protest.

  


John sleeps in Rosie’s room that night and doesn’t come back downstairs. Sherlock doesn’t sleep at all, his mind spiralling, trying to work it out. Things seems worse on each go-round. It’s just paperwork, isn’t it? It shouldn’t be this unsettling to either of them. John shouldn’t have blown it out of proportion, not into a question of _marriage_. They have no need of a marriage, they’d already said forever to each other, this is just tying up the loose ends in the eyes of the law. But then if John does consider a civil partnership the same as a marriage and is so violently against it, what does that mean?

 

He tries to think of something, anything else but his mind keeps looping itself, refusing to move away from the questions in a straight line, and nothing will alter its course. Well, one thing would. But he’s kept his promise and hasn’t touched a thing since the conclusion of the Culverton Smith case, and with Rosie in the house now there’s definitely a zero-tolerance policy in effect. He doesn’t have a stash left in any case, even if he were inclined to risk blowing up what’s left of his relationship for a few hours of quieter thoughts.

 

By five am Sherlock can’t take it anymore. He bolts up the stairs, ready to burst into the bedroom and demand an explanation, the sanctity of a sleeping child be damned. Instead, he nearly trips over John, sitting on the floor of the narrow hall with his back against the door. Sherlock steadies himself on the lintel, awkwardly, wind taken out of him.

 

John looks completely unsurprised by any of this, if not exactly thrilled to see him. “Can I help you?” he asks, dryly.

 

Sherlock shrugs sullenly and slides himself down the opposite wall to the floor, mirroring John’s position but with his feet halfway up the wall next to John. They sit silently for a moment. He’d been so fired up to have it out in a dramatic fashion, but he hadn’t expected the sight of John looking so worn and a little sad. The desire for an argument curdles into its own kind of exhaustion.

 

“John…” he starts, quietly.

 

“Yes?”

 

He shakes his head, having nothing past that and resumes scrutinising the stains on the wallpaper a foot to the left of John’s head. After a few more moments he tries again.

 

“John?”

 

“ _Yes_ , Sherlock?” John’s voice isn’t angry, but there’s just enough of an edge to it to tell Sherlock that his friend is not finding his lack of ability to communicate charming right now.

 

“If you don’t want me to be Rosie’s father, I understand.” This is nowhere close to what he had intended to say, but the words escape before he can stop them.

 

John’s head shoots up and he looks at Sherlock with red-rimmed irises. “Sherlock,” he says, his voice much gentler than Sherlock expects. “That’s not what this is about. _At all_. Why would you think that?”

 

Sherlock presses his lips together anxiously. “Even I know I’m not a suitable guardian for a child. I’m not stable. Or safe. I don’t remember when she needs meals or naps or what toy she likes best this week. I don’t help you unless you practically force me. I wouldn’t blame if you’d decided that this… isn’t a good idea after all.”

 

John leans his head back against the wall and takes a long breath. “How can you be so insecure and so arrogant at the same time? Egotistical nitwit.”

 

Sherlock feels the pressure on his chest start to lift just the barest bit at the epithet.

 

John continues. “To be honest, I’m not sure what made me angrier. That you thought it was perfectly fine to make such an enormous, permanent decision for all our lives without mentioning it to me, without asking… or that you didn’t even consider it to _be_ something massively important or significant in any way. It’s not just paperwork, Sherlock. It is something much bigger than that, much more meaningful. You can’t just make me an afterthought in my own life, or in Rosie’s.”

 

“We already said forever, I just thought…” Sherlock grapples for the words and John watches him closely, trying to read the things Sherlock can’t articulate. “I thought, with all we’ve been through, _that_ was the biggest thing. And anything after that was trivial in comparison. It was just supposed to be...formalising it. It seemed like such a small thing after…”

 

He doesn’t have the words to encompass what he means right now. Years, what feels like a lifetime of belonging to each other, of leaving each other, of fights and denials and promises and putting each other through multiple circles of hell, of sacrifice, of deaths real and fictitious, of building a new language of words and gestures and touches just to even be able to understand each other, and so much light, so much brightness that even now John looks like the proverbial Christmas star has settled itself in his top floor hallway. How can anything else possibly matter in the slightest after living through all of that and still, somehow, managing to have held on to each other?

 

Sherlock doesn’t know how to say even the smallest scintilla of any of that. But he doesn’t need to. The frustration in John’s face melts away like snow on a lamppost. He lets out a long breath, puts his hand on Sherlock’s bare calf. Sherlock feels warm for the first time in a month, a hot-water bottle being filled up from the place where John is touching him until he’s full to bursting with warmth.

 

“You’re right,” John says simply. “You shouldn’t have sprung it on me like that, and you _definitely_ shouldn’t have forged my name on anything. But you’re right. We’re a family already and we came by it the longest and most difficult way possible. We decided a long time ago we’d never let each other go again. Anything else is trivial, just as you said.”

 

He smiles at Sherlock like the first dawn at the North Pole after a very dark winter. For a moment all is right. But then something flickers across John’s face, something that hurts him.

 

“John?”

 

John shakes his head and looks away, but doesn’t take his hand off Sherlock’s leg.  

 

“I just… aside from being angry about how you did it and how you were thinking about it, I think I reacted so strongly because of Mary. What I have with you and what I had with her were so different. And I felt so guilty that I loved you, that I ran back to you so quickly, that I betrayed her in so many ways, big and small. That she died because… because of what we do, what we are together.

 

“And I was married to her. It seems silly saying it, but part of me believed that as long as you were different things to me, as long as I didn’t put you in that place, officially, it was okay that I always wanted you more, even when we were together. Marriage, partnership, whatever you want to call it, and then having you adopt her daughter… it just felt like a final betrayal. Like erasing her completely.”

 

The shard in Sherlock’s heart that is Mary Watson’s final gift to him stabs painfully and he nods, trying not to let any of it show. “Yes. Of course, I should have realized… don’t give it another thought. There are plenty of other ways we can plan for Rosie.”

 

But John shakes his head. “No. Keeping a shrine to Mary out of guilt while you’re right here with me, when you’re my future is wrong. And she’d be the first to say so.”

 

He swings himself around so that they are next to each other, taking Sherlock’s hand and entangling their fingers and throwing his left leg over Sherlock’s right one. Sherlock shivers as all the tension drains from his body at John’s touch.

 

“I do want that with you, Sherlock. I _want_ it to be formal and legal and all of those boring things so no one in the world can say we don’t belong to each other, that our family doesn’t count. I just… maybe need a little time. And therapy.” He smiles wryly, a smoldering Yule log.

 

Before Sherlock can reply, the sound of Rosie stirring drifts into the hall. John’s on his feet instantly. Sherlock gets up as well and turns to go downstairs, not wanting to intrude. Before he get far, John grabs the edge of his sleeve and motions for Sherlock to follow him into the room.   

 

The slightest lightening of the sky is evident through the window. Rosie shifts in her cot, but hasn’t woken. John takes Sherlock’s hand again as they peer over the rails at the sleeping child, unruly dark curls fanned out around her fine-featured face.

  
“What I can’t get over is how much she actually looks like you,”John whispers. “Are you quite certain you need to adopt her? You and Mary spent an awful lot of time together.”

 

Sherlock opens his mouth in stunned self-defence before he realises John is teasing. John has to stifle a laugh behind his hands at the appalled expression on Sherlock’s face. Sherlock only realises how worried he’d been when relief shoots through him that John is joking with him again.

 

John continues. “Either way, I hope she’s got her mother’s personality. And brains.”

 

“Oh, I don’t know about that, John. She could do worse than yours.”

 

“Compliments on my intelligence. Is that your way of saying sorry?”

 

“Take it as you like. And whether she wants to study medicine or chemistry or covert ops or...Tuvan throat singing, she should be all set,” Sherlock tells him.

 

“Set? What do you mean?”

 

“She’ll be the only heir to the entire Holmes estate, mine and Mycroft’s. Unless he should take it into his head to have late-in-life offspring. Unlikely. And until then her trusts should cover school, university, several post-graduate degrees, synchronized swimming lessons, tattoos, tattoo removal, a wedding, a divorce, a trip around the world to ‘find herself’ or all of the above. I thought it best to allow for some unpredictability given her parentage.”

 

John boggles at him, speechless. Before he can collect himself, Rosie stirs again, waking fully this time. She opens her mouth to cry but the sight of both of them right there startles her out of it. John goes to pick her up but before he can, she reaches out for Sherlock.

 

“Papa?”

 

Sherlock hesitates for a fraction of a second and then obeys. She sleepily twines her arms around Sherlock’s neck as he lifts her, holding her close but little uncertainly.

 

When he looks back, John is staring at them in a way Sherlock’s never quite seen before and hasn't an inkling of how to interpret.

 

“John, why are you looking at me like that? Is something wrong?”

 

John shakes his head vehemently. “No. The opposite of wrong.” He clears his throat. “Tell me, how quickly can you get that registrar back here?”

 

Slowly Sherlock realises what John is telling him and a tiny, pleased smile makes its way to his lips. He shifts Rosie onto his hip. “John Watson, are you proposing to me?”

 

John closes the distance between them, putting one hand on his daughter’s back and the other on Sherlock’s waist. He goes up on his toes to kiss Sherlock softly.

 

“Absolutely not,” John says solemnly. “I just don’t want to forget the paperwork.”


End file.
